Finding Jack
by thescottishawesome
Summary: The Torchwood team finds a signal coming from twenty feet underground. They dig up a coffin wrapped in chains, only to find the three-hundred year old body hasn't aged a day. Who is the man inside? Yeah, it's Jack. A quick, fun one-shot.


_AN: Prior to watching Torchwood, I heard something online about Jack getting buried alive. As it hadn't happened on Doctor Who, I figured it was a Torchwood spoiler and didn't look into it. Upon watching Torchwood, I found myself desperately hoping that the first episode would open up with Torchwood doing their thing and stumbling upon Jack. It didn't happen, A la, this fic. This is really just for fun. Assume for the purposes of this fic, that the team, excluding Jack, managed to get together on their own. Enjoy!_

* * *

The four members of the Torchwood Cardiff team stand around a twenty-foot hole in the ground, watching a coffin wrapped in chains being lifted out.

"Is this where the signals were coming from, Tosh?" Gwen asks.

Tapping at a hand-held gadget, Tosh confirms that it is. "It's been underground for approximately three hundred years."

"Looks like someone really didn't want anyone getting in," Owen says.

"Or they really didn't want someone getting out," Ianto speculates.

Once the coffin is set on the ground, Owen moves in with the bolt cutters. He pulls off the lid, but immediately jumps back. "Shit!" he exclaims.

Gwen, Tosh and Ianto converge on the coffin, and they all see what made Owen jump.

Inside the coffin is a man. He wears a long, military style coat, which obscures what he's wearing but is definitely not eighteenth century. He doesn't even look dead, though he's not breathing. The body had not decomposed at all in three hundred years!

"Owen, ch-check him." Gwen orders shakily.

Owen puts his fingers, which are trembling slightly, to the man's throat, then pulls up his eyelids. After a quick glance at the rest of the body, he announces, "Dead. Asphyxiation."

"How long?" Gwen asks.

"Maybe ten minutes," Owen says, not believing it himself.

Ianto, slowly, hesitantly, reaches inside the man's coat and pulls out a wallet. "Captain Jack Harkness. American, ID says twentieth century."

But a quick flip through the bills in the wallet reveals a different story.

"They're from all over!" Gwen says incredulously. "Ninetieth, twentieth, twenty-first century, there's even money from the future!"

Gwen hands the wallet back to Ianto, happy to be able to delegate the task. The man in the coffin is not right. She can feel it.

Ianto bends over the coffin to replace the wallet, when all of a sudden, the man takes a shuddering gasp and bolts upright, nearly knocking heads with Ianto.

The team, shocked, but well trained, have their guns out in a moment, all aimed at the man's chest.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," the man says cajolingly, with an American accent. He uses the edges of the coffin to push himself standing. "I mean no harm."

"You were dead!" Ianto says accusatorially.

The man smiles and holds out his hand. "Hi, Captain Jack Harkness," he says, his tone unmistakably flirty. "And you are?"

Ianto, not knowing what to do, takes that man's hand, gives it a shake, and says "Ianto Jones."

"You were dead, and now you're not," Gwen says, her gun down, but still in her hand.

"Yeah, it's a thing I do. So Cardiff, this is Cardiff, right? I'm guessing early twenty-first century, going by that _lovely_ suit," he says, smiling at Ianto. "Am I right?"

Gwen nods. "Excellent!" Jack exclaims. "I love the twenty-first century. So that makes you Torchwood Three, right?"

Gwen glares. "You're not supposed to know that."

"I know a lot of things I'm not supposed to know. So is this after Canary Wharf?"

Ignoring this question, Gwen asks, "Why were you in the coffin?"

"Oh, I was tracking a hostile alien, it found out I have a thing for not staying dead, one thing led to another, I wound up underground."

"Scans say he's human," Tosh calls to Gwen, somewhat dubiously. "The signal is coming from his pocket."

"Oh? Do you mean this?" He reaches into his pocket, and automatically, the team twitches towards their weapons. "Relax. It's just this." He pulls out a metallic, vaguely weapon-like object. Sonic blaster. Dead of course, it hasn't been used in three hundred years, has it?"

Gwen holds out her hand, and Jack obligingly places the weapon in it. Turning it over quickly, Gwen says, "This is advanced technology."

"Approximately year five thousand."

"Your ID says twentieth century."

"Yeah, that's another thing I do. So you know my name, what's yours?"

"I'm Gwen Cooper, I'm the leader, and this is my team, Toshiko Sato, Ianto Jones and Owen Harper. Listen, you're going to have to come back with us. We need to get some information."

"Back where?"

"Big science-fiction super-base."

Jack smiles. "Sounds like fun."


End file.
